Who is going to buy CloudFlare

CloudFlare has accomplished an incredible feat since launching in 2009. It has solidified its place in the CDN ecosystem with 1.5 million users. It is still nowhere near the size of CDN powerhouse Akamai, but it has managed to have an impressive track record nonetheless.

At its most basic level, CloudFlare is a CDN with a WAF (Web Application Firewall) and Dynamic Content Acceleration offering. Other CDNs have similar offerings including Akamai and Yottaa. This leads us to the question, who will buy CloudFlare and their service portfolio?

Here is my prediction. I’ll start with the process of elimination. Akamai won’t do it. Too much product overlap. Plus, Akamai doesn’t need any features that CloudFlare has to offer.

That leaves us with Yahoo, Google, and Cisco. Cisco won’t do it, since they are not in the business of hosting websites. Google, probably not. They already have their own CDN infrastructure. If they were going to buy a CDN, they would have purchased EdgeCast.That leaves us with Yahoo. Yahoo is in the business of hosting websites and anything to do with massive amount of Internet users.